The Children of Húrin
The Children of Húrin was the first of the Great Tales, begun by J.R.R. Tolkien in 1918 and published in 2007 (ISBN 0-618-89464-0), once more than thirty years-worth of his notes were compiled and edited by his son, Christopher. It is the expanded account of the story of the wanderings and deeds of Túrin Turambar, son of Húrin, and his sister Niënor, their struggle against fate (and the curse cast upon Húrin's kin), as well as the tragic end of their lives and of their mother, Morwen. It is for this reason the darkest example of any of Tolkien's works. The foremost substantiation of any argument against disregarding The High Fantasy genre as colorless or indeed "holier than thou". The hero is doomed yet strives toward goodness in spite of inadvertently murdering friends and becoming his sisters lover. Túrin fights against self-loathing as well as sorrow throughout, until the culmination of the novel's events. Synopsis Christopher Tolkien: "There are tales of Middle-earth from times long before The Lord of the Rings, and the story told in this book is set in the great country that lay beyond the Grey Havens in the North: lands where Treebeard once walked, but which were drowned in the great cataclysm that ended the First Age of the World. In that remote time Morgoth, the first Dark Lord, dwelt in the vast fortress of Angband in the North; and the tragedy of Turin and his sister Niënor unfolded within the shadow of the fear of Angband and the war waged by Morgoth against the lands and secret cities of the Elves. Their brief and passionate lives were dominated by the elemental hatred that Morgoth bore them as the children of Hurin, the man who had dared to defy and to scorn him to his face. Against them he sent his formidable servant, Glaurung, a powerful spirit in the form of a huge wingless dragon of fire. Into his story of brutal conquest and flight, of forest hiding-places and pursuit, of resistance with lessening hope, the mythological persons of the God and the Dragon enter in fearfully articulate form. Sardonic and mocking, Glaurung manipulated the fates of Túrin and Nienor by lies of diabolic cunning and guile, and the curse of Morgoth was fulfilled. The earliest versions of this story by J.R.R. Tolkien go back to the end of the First World War and the years that followed; but long afterwards, when The Lord of the Rings was finished, he wrote it anew and greatly enlarged it in complexities of motive and character: it became the dominant story in his later work on Middle-earth. But he could not bring it to final and finished form. In this book I have endeavoured to construct, after long study of the manuscripts, a coherent narrative without any editorial invention." Contents *Preface *Introduction *Note on Pronunciation Narn I Chîn Húrin The Tale of the Children of Húrin Chapters # The Childhood of Túrin # The Battle of Unnumbered Tears # The Words of Húrin and Morgoth # The Departure of Túrin # Túrin in Doriath # Túrin among the Outlaws # Of Mîm the Dwarf # The Land of Bow and Helm # The Death of Beleg # Túrin in Nargothrond # The Fall of Nargothrond # The Return of Túrin to Dor-lómin # The Coming of Túrin into Brethil # The Journey of Morwen and Niënor to Nargothrond # Niënor in Brethil # The Coming of Glaurung # The Death of Glaurung # The Death of Túrin * Genealogies: # The House of Hador & the People of Haleth # The House of Bëor # The Princes of the Noldor * Appendix: # The Evolution of the Great Tales # The Composition of the Text *List of Names: # Notes on the map Release The book was released on 17 April, 2007 by Houghton Mifflin in the United States, and by HarperCollins in the United Kingdom. Development When becoming a novel in form, was designed as a single and continuous narrative, not necessarily a source that covers every single source of the narrative (or alternate versions of the tale). Certain aspects related to Húrin following the story are left out but do get brought up in the follow up Beren and Lúthien, as does extended story for Mîm and his curse of the gold of Glaurung, and its relevance to the fall of Doriath, and corruption of the Dwarves and others who touch it. Though there is still much of Túrin's extended history left out of either source. Additionally, certain aspects of events Túrin's band in Mîm's fortress and his curse there differ from what was described in The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales (though it contains much of the latter version), sometimes in the ordering of events, or inclusion/removal of certain characters. This was in part Christopher Tolkien's attempt to utilize newer sources he had discovered after those sources were published. There are a few additional details that differ between other sources, and other versions included in the The History of Middle-earth. Most of the material of the story is from prose sources. Very little from the Lay of the Children of Húrin ''was used, and where it was, it was amended from verse-form to prose. When elements from ''Narn i Chîn Húrin, most of the side story of Húrin is excluded, i.e. his adventures and fate (which are fully recounted in the Lost Tale The Wanderings of Húrin). Translations External links *Tolkien.co.uk - the website has recently been updated with special 'The Children of Húrin' exclusives. *The Children of Húrin Release Party *http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20011428,00.html de:Die Kinder Húrins fr:Les Enfants de Húrin it:I Figli di Húrin pl:Dzieci Húrina ru:Дети Хурина Category:Books Category:Novels Category:Tales Category:Works by J.R.R. Tolkien Category:Primary literature Category:Great Tales publications